Lisa Dank at The Nectar Lounge tonight.
Straight dudes, cower before the post post (post?) feminist pop starlets of 2009. Lady Gaga goes guerrilla in the war of sexes, embodying straight male sexual nightmares (stalking, fakin it’, ect) and honestly, she comes off as tame.
Compare her to Ke$ha’s hit, “Tik Tok,” on which the dollar sign diva snaps at a terrified guy, “Don’t be a little bitch with your chit-chat/ Just show me where your dick’s at.” Ke$ha makes herself a sex object that doesn’t experience pleasure from sex but has it anyway just to fuck with guys. An interesting subversion of typical male radio Lothario? Sure, but the end result is no more comforting than current male oppression. Can’t we all find some common ground?
So when Seattle’s own gossip-mag styled pop star, Lisa Dank sings “When you coming back? I know you’re tired of masturbating,” it melts my Obama voting heart. She’ll play act the dominating diva when she needs to make a point about gender politics (and, yeah they still need to be made), but she can flip on a dime, cooing crudely about the mutual understanding of vulnerability that underscores a functional relationship. At the end of (the conveniently-titled-for-my-thesis) “The Battle,” Ms. Dank shows her soft heart. “All the diamonds…all the fame/ all I really wanted was your love, your pure, simple love,” she sings.
And the music’s pretty good too. Like Santogold, Lisa Dank switches genre song to song, but the basic elements of pop since the rise of hip-hop are always present—kick drums and snares. The tracks are meant for dancing; “Ride” takes a Spanish guitar to the club for a laid back but insistent groove.
My favorite is “Lazer Dome” which finds her incanting over a P smoov-ian electro-hip hop hybrid, “for my good loving you’ve been waiting.” I guess hiding in terror is a form of waiting.
Lisa Dank plays the Nectar Lounge tonight, 9pm, $5.
